Personal (with bonus short story Not a Drill): A Jack Reacher Novel

Personal (with bonus short story Not a Drill): A Jack Reacher Novel

Lee Child

Language: English

Pages: 544

ISBN: 0804178755

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Jack Reacher returns in another fast-moving, action-packed, suspenseful book from Lee Child.You can leave the army, but the army doesn’t leave you. Not always. Not completely, notes Jack Reacher—and sure enough, the retired military cop is soon pulled back into service. This time, for the State Department and the CIA.

Someone has taken a shot at the president of France in the City of Light. The bullet was American. The distance between the gunman and the target was exceptional. How many snipers can shoot from three-quarters of a mile with total confidence? Very few, but John Kott—an American marksman gone bad—is one of them. And after fifteen years in prison, he’s out, unaccounted for, and likely drawing a bead on a G8 summit packed with enough world leaders to tempt any assassin.

If anyone can stop Kott, it’s the man who beat him before: Reacher. And though he’d rather work alone, Reacher is teamed with Casey Nice, a rookie analyst who keeps her cool with Zoloft. But they’re facing a rough road, full of ruthless mobsters, Serbian thugs, close calls, double-crosses—and no backup if they’re caught. All the while Reacher can’t stop thinking about the woman he once failed to save. But he won’t let that that happen again. Not this time. Not Nice.

Reacher never gets too close. But now a killer is making it personal.

Praise for Personal “The best one yet.”—Stephen King

“Reacher is the stuff of myth, a great male fantasy. . . . One of this century’s most original, tantalizing pop-fiction heroes . . . Child does a masterly job of bringing his adventure to life with endless surprises and fierce suspense.”—The Washington Post

“Yet another satisfying page-turner.”—Entertainment Weekly “Reacher is always up for a good fight, most entertainingly when he goes mano a mano with a seven-foot, 300-pound monster of a mobster named Little Joey. But it’s Reacher the Teacher who wows here.”—Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times “Jack Reacher is today’s James Bond, a thriller hero we can’t get enough of. I read every one as soon as it appears.”—Ken Follett

“Reacher’s just one of fiction’s great mysterious strangers.”—Maxim “If you like fast-moving thrillers, you’ll want to take a look at this one.”—John Sandford “Fans won’t be disappointed by this suspense-filled, riveting thriller.”—Library Journal (starred review) “Child is the alpha dog of thriller writers, each new book zooming to the top of best-seller lists with the velocity of a Reacher head butt.”—Booklist “Every Reacher novel delivers a jolt to the nervous system.”—Kirkus Reviews

stop. He started dancing again, hopping from side to side, bending one way, bending the other. His huge feet were stamping divots in the perfect grass. I guessed the bowling club was going to be seriously pissed. I hoped they had insurance. Or a big bag of seed. I said, “Listen up, Joey. Here’s the thing. I need to get in your house. Without you being there. Option one is agree right now.” He said, “What’s option two?” “I advise you to choose option one.” “An Englishman’s home is his castle.”

more, not less, and fluently, and fluidly, and very precisely, but also calmly. There was no time to settle and check and breathe. If the glass had shattered, the French guy would have been in the wind more or less immediately. At least he would have been hopping around like crazy. As it was he was buried in agents about two seconds later. Think about it. You shoot, you move the muzzle seven thousandths of an inch, and you shoot again, all way faster than I can even say it. That would have taken

third or the fourth the cordon is going to start shooting on sight. So we’re not going to do the spider web thing. We’re going to do something else.” “What else?” “I’ll explain it later,” I said, because at that point I was drawing a blank, and she had only five pills left. Chapter 24 I slept for maybe three hours, bolt upright, head clamped, and then about ninety minutes before arrival the lights came on and a whole lot of crashing and banging started up in the galleys. Casey Nice had the

somewhere between perhaps fifteen and twenty percent of the Romford Boys’ net profit was up for grabs. Which would be interesting. But not as interesting as it might perhaps become, if the stakes were somewhat higher still, and certainly more Oedipal. Suppose our initial attack was on Charlie White himself? That would cut the head off the octopus, not just an arm. And it would certainly bring all three lieutenants to the scene, and even if I didn’t get them all there, then they might well take

central to wait on events. I heard his footsteps all the way at the far end of the path, a soft, whispering sound, amplified but also modified by the parallel board fences. Then as he got closer I heard the muted crunch of his soles on the thin scattering of grit, and at one point I heard a brief rat-a-tat scuffle, as if he had swayed on the uneven ground and something in his hand had brushed against the boards. Something leather, I thought, given the sound. He stepped into the clearing, and